the flag exhibited in the Tyne (whether to dry, or for any other purpose, we care not,) was composed of three perpendicular stripes, as can be proved by fifty unimpeachable witnesses. May we not ascribe to Mr Chalmers some infirmity of memory in this matter also?"

And how stands the other affair of the flag-his Lordship's own flag, said to have been flying at Cherbourg from the mast-head of the Louisa over the Union Jack? His Lordship in his affidavit swears, "that he had not on board the Louisa any flag or ensign on which were painted or placed his family arms. In his family arms it appears, from an affidavit from the Heralds' College, that "the supporters are two Lions, and the sinister Lion is a Lion rampant, azure gorged." And Sir James Scarlett said, "I have the affidavit of Stephen Alford, of Portsmouth, the master of the Zephyr yacht, belonging to Sir Charles Ogle, Bart., of the Royal Yacht Squadron, who was in the harbour of Cherbourg in the months of August and September last. He swears that he saw Lord Durham's yacht, the Louisa, in the basin of the harbour of Cherbourg, and that one day a blue flag, with the figure of a lion upon it, was hoisted at the masthead of the Louisa, above the flag of England (the Union Jack). He adds, that the circumstance was a subject of general observation and remark, and excited much indignation; and that it was proposed by some of the sailors, in his presence, to board the Louisa, and take Lord Durham's flag down by force, because they considered it an insult to the English flag. The next is the affidavit of John Harbert, the master of the Blue-eyed Maid, another yacht of the squadron, who states that many of the yachts of the squadron had private flags on board, bearing the arms or crest, or a part of the arms or crest of the owner; that Lord Durham's private flag was a blue flag, with a lion in the centre; and that he had seen that flag on board the Louisa, and likewise on a flag-staff at Egypt House, his Lordship's residence in the Isle of Wight. The deponent then states that this flag was, in the face of the whole squadron in the harbour of Cherbourg, hoisted at the

mast-head of the Louisa, above the flag of England. He says that no other yacht in the squadron had the private flag in the same position; and the witness describes in strong terms the indignation which was excited by the exhibition. I have the affidavit of James Saunders, of Portsmouth, pilot and owner of the ship Anglesey, who happened to be in Cherbourg harbour with his vessel at the time, and who swears that he saw the Earl of Durham's yacht, the Louisa, in the basin of the harbour of Cherbourg; and he speaks in the same terms of the hoisting of the blue flag with a lion on it over the flag of England, and of the feelings which it excited." Lord Durham says in his affidavit that he lived ashore in an hotel, and left the management of flags and every thing else to Chalmers. But Davies the mate says in his affidavit, that Lord Durham seeing the Lambton Lion

rampant and azure gorged" at the mast-head of the Louisa, over the Union Jack, sent orders to take him down. Is this a lie?

Every word, it turns out, in the paragraph inserted by Mr Hernaman in the Newcastle Journal of Sept. 28th, was true! Had every word of it been false, no man of proper spirit but would have scorned to prosecute for such a libel; but as the matter stands, Lord Durham has disgraced himself by his blind attempt to punish Mr Hernaman as a criminal by fine and imprisonment, which, no doubt, he hoped might be large and long-more even than the five tall fellows who assaulted that gentleman in his office-for from the Father of our Freedom, the Baron who gave us our new Magna Charta

the Jupiter Parturiens of the Bill who could have looked for beha viour so like that of the poorest and paltriest pauper in reputation, among the meanest of mere mortals, afraid that a puff of air might blow off the last rag left to cover his nakedness?

Do we accuse Lord Durham of false-swearing in his affidavits? No. The Lord Chief-Justice says well"I am very far from saying that the facts of this case justify any imputation on Lord Durham. On the contrary, it appears to me that his Lordship has most fully exculpated himself from the charges that have

been brought against him personally; and I think the sole circumstance of his Lordship having once directed that a particular flag should be taken down, is really not to be considered in the smallest degree as an exception to the general affidavit made by himself, that he left the arrange ment and control of the flags altogether to certain officers that were on board his yacht.' But I must own I do not consider that, in the strong terms which have been press ed on us, this paragraph can be fairly taken to intend that Lord Durham did take that personal part, supposing the tricolor was flying at one time, and supposing the flags were improperly arranged at another on board the yacht, which was generally under his Lordship's control as the owner, and he being at liberty to be always on board. I think it is not very violent for the writer of public news to suppose that his Lordship might be on board, and might be aware of every thing going on; and it seems to me, when the whole is founded on a fact stated to have occurred in the River Tyne, that it must be taken that the writer con

sidered the general ownership, and control of his Lordship over the yacht, as the sole evidence of his having taken any such part in it. Although I think that Lord Durham has most fully exculpated himself, yet it is necessary for something more to be established. Before I will concur in making absolute any rule for the extraordinary interposition of the Court, it must appear to my satisfaction that the party acted wilfully, and believed he was stating what was untrue. I am convinced, on the contrary, that this person (Mr Hernaman) really believed he was stating the truth-a belief pro

bably influenced by the political opinions which he avows; but with respect to which I do think that in times like these some considerable allowance ought to be made."

"This person, Mr Hernaman," as the Lord Chief-Justice calls himaccording to this report-is as respectable a person as either his prosecutor or his judge-and far more moderate in the " political opinions he avows," and his "belief” far less "influenced" by them, than Mr Denman, or Mr Lambton, or AttorneyGeneral Sir Thomas Denman, M.P. for Nottingham-or Him of the sinister lion rampant and azure-gorged, who would not "make considerable allowance" for any thing but his own tyrannical temper and savage pride in the unbridled indulgence of which he has been baffled and humbled-while hurried along headlong and blind-folded in a course that he believed would bring destruction on an honest and enlightened man-as good a Conservative as is in all the North-not excepting even the admirable Durham Advertiser himself

against whom, too, the Earl of Durham had once intended to proceed-and against our old friend the John Bull, the wittiest of the wittyand against the Standard, a paper unsurpassed in principle and unequalled in power;-but his Lordship's great heart misgave him-and the defeat he has sustained is enough for one such Lord in one life-time, which henceforth must be illustrious in the light of the love of liberty-and perpetually perfumed as with" Sabean odours from the spicy shores of Araby the blest"-with that air which is the only air he can breathe-for if he has it not-he dies-THE LIBER TY OF THE PRESS.

I HAD been for six months fourth lieutenant of H. M. S. Gazelle, on board of which Sir Oliver Oakplank had his broad pennant* hoisted, as the Commander-in-Chief on the African station. The last time we touched at Cape Coast we took in with us a Spanish felucca, that we had previously cut out of the Bonny River, with part of her cargo of slaves on board.

She had cost us a hard tussle, and several of our people had fallen by the sword in the attack, but more afterwards from dysentery and marsh fever, the seeds of which had doubtless been sown in the pestilential estuary at the time of the attack, although there is no disputing that they were much more virulently developed afterwards than they would otherwise have been by a week's exposure in open boats to the deleterious changes of the atmosphere. Our excellent Commodore, therefore, the father of his crew, seeing the undeniable necessity of lessening the exposure of the men in such a villanous climate, in stantly wrote home to the Admiralty, requesting that half-a-dozen small vessels might be sent to him, of an easy draught of water, so that they might take charge of the boats, and afford a comfortable shelter to their crews; at the same time that they should be able to get over the bars, without damage, of the various African rivers, where the contraband Guineamen were in the habit of lurking. To evince that he practised what he preached, he instantly fitted out the captured felucca, on his own responsibility, manned her with five-and-twenty men, and gave the command of her to our third lieutenant.

She had been despatched about

City of the Plague.

a fortnight before in the direction of Fernando Po, and we had stood in on the morning of the day on which my narrative commences, to make Cape Formosa, which was the rendezvous fixed on between us. About three o'clock, P. M., when we were within ten miles of the Cape, without any appearance of the tender, we fell in with a Liverpool trader, who was bound to the Brass River to load palm oil and sandalwood. She reported that the night before they had come across a Spaniard, who fired into them, when they sheered-to with an intent to speak him. The master said, that when first seen, the strange sail was standing right in for the river ahead of us; and, from the noises he heard, he was sure he had negroes on board. It was therefore conjectured that she was one of the vessels who had taken in part of her cargo of slaves at the Bonny River, and was now bound for the Nun or Brass River to complete it. They were if any thing more confirmed in this by the circumstance of his keeping away, and standing to the southwest, the moment he found they were hauling in for the land, as if anxious to mislead them, by inducing a belief that he was off for the West Indies or Brazil. This was the sum total of the information received from the Liverpool-man; but the same afternoon we fell in with an American, who rejoiced our hearts by saying that he had that morning been chased by a vessel answering the description of the felucca, and immediately after we hove about, and stood out to sea again, making sail in the direction indicated. In consequence of our overhauling this vessel, the Commodore had put off his dinner for an hour; and when

all the ropes had been coiled down, and every thing made snug after tacking, he resumed his. walk on the weather side of the quarterdeck, in company with Mr David Sprawl, the first lieutenant.

The Commodore was a red-faced little man, with a very irritable cast of countenance, which, however, was by no means a true index to his warm heart, for I verily believe that no commander was ever more beloved by officers and men than he was. He had seen a great deal of service, and had been several times wounded; once, in particular, very badly, by a grape-shot that had shattered his left thigh, and considerably shortened it, and thereby gave him a kick in his gallop, as he himself used to phrase it, until the day of his death. He was a wag in his way, and the officer now perambulating the deck alongside of him was an unfailing source of mirth; although the Commodore never passed the limits of strict naval etiquette, or trespassed beyond the bounds of perfect good breeding in his fun. The gallant old fellow was dressed in faded nankeen trowsers-discoloured cotton stockings-shoes, with corn-holes cut in the toes-an ill-washed and rumpled white Marseilles waistcoat -and an old blue uniform coat, worn absolutely threadbare, white and soapy at the seams and elbows; each shoulder being garnished with a faded gold lace strap, which confined the epaulets when mounted, and that was only on a Sunday. His silk neckcloth had been most probably black once, but now it was a dingy brown; and he wore a most shocking bad hat-an old white beaver, with very broad brims, the snout of it fastened back to the crown with a lanyard of common spunyarn, buttoned up, as it were, like the chapeaux in Charles the Second's time, to prevent it flapping down over his eyes. He walked backwards and forwards very quickly, taking two steps for Sprawl's one, and whenever he turned, he gave a loud stamp, and swung briskly about on the good leg as if it had been a pivot, giving a most curious indescribable flourish in the air with the wounded limb in the roundcoming,

like the last quiver of Noblet's leg in an expiring pirouette.

Lieutenant Sprawl, the officer with whom he was walking, and keeping up an animated conversation, was also in no small degree remarkable in his externals, but in a totally different line. He was a tall man, at the very least six feet high, and stout in proportion; very squareshouldered; but, large as he was, his coat seemed to have been made to fit even a stouter person, for the shoulder-straps (I think that is the name) projected considerably beyond his shoulders, so that they gave the upper part of his figure a sharp ungainly appearance, like the projecting eaves of a Swiss cottage. Below these wide-spreading upperworks he tapered away to nothing at the loins, and over the hips he was not the girth of a growing lad. His thighs were very short, but his legs, from the knee down, were the longcst I ever saw in man, reversing all one's notions of proportion or symmetry, for they gradually swelled out from the knee, until they ended in the ankle, which emulated, if it did not altogether surpass, the calf in diameter. But this was not all; for when you looked at him in a front view, his lower spars, from the knee down, were a perfect facsimile of the letter V reversed, that is, with the apex uppermost, while the long splay feet formed the strokes across, or the bases of the letter, into which the shanks or shin bones were morticed amidships as nearly as may be, so that the heel projected aft very nearly as far as the toe did forward, as if he had been built after the model of some river-craft, to sail backwards or forwards as might be required, without either tacking or wearing. The feet were conspicuously stuck out before him, and kept cruizing about of their own accord apparently, as if they were running away with the man. He had an immensely large head, with a great fell of coarse red hair, which hung down in greasy masses on each side of his pale freckled visage, until it blended into two immense whiskers, which he cultivated under his chin with great care, so that at length heappeared to be peeping through a fur collar, like a Madagascar ourang-outang.

His eyes were large, prominent, and of a deadly pale blue; his general loveliness being diversified by a most conspicuous squint. He had absolutely no eyebrows, but a curious nondescript sort of tumble-out forehead, as like an ill-washed winter-turnip in its phrenological developements as one could well imagine. As for his nose, it had the regular twist of a rifleman's powder-horn. But his lovely mouth, who shall describe it? Disdaining to claim acquaintance with the aforesaid beak, it had chosen its site under the left eye, so that a line-I here address myself to mathematical readersdrawn from the innermost corner of the right eye, and intersecting the tip of the snout, would have touched the right corner of the aforesaid hole in his face-it could be dignified with no other name, for, in sober reality, it more resembled a gash in a pumpkin, made by a clumsy bill-hook, than any thing else.

Lips he had none; and the first impression on one's mind when you saw him, was, Bless me-what an oddity! The man has no mouth-until he did make play with his potato-trap, and then it was like a gap suddenly split open in a piece of mottled freestone. It was altogether so much out of its latitude, that when he spoke, it seemed aside, as the players say; and when he drank his wine, he looked, for all the world, as if he had been pouring it into his ear. As he walked, he vehemently swung his arms backwards and forwards, as if they had been paddles necessary to propel him ahead, carrying on leisurely when he first turned, but gradually increasing his pace as he proceeded, until he sculled along at a terrible rate.

So now if the admiring reader will take the trouble to dress this Adonis, I will furnish the apparel. Imprimis, he wore a curious wee hat, with scarcely any brim, the remains of the nap bleached by a burning sun, and splashed and matted together from the pelting of numberless showers, and the washing up of many a salt sea spray, but carefully garnished, nevertheless, with a double stripe of fresh gold-lace, and a naval button on the left side. Add to this, an oldfashioned uniform coat, very far through, as we say; long-waisted, with

remarkably short skirts, but the strap for the epaulet new and bright as the loop on the hat; and then swathe him in a dingy white kerseymere waistcoat, over which dangled a great horn eye-glass, suspended by a magnificent new broad watered black ribbon; and, finally, take the trouble to shroud the lower limbs of the Apollo in ancient duck trowsers, extending about half-way down the calf of the leg, if calf he had, leaving his pillar-like ankles conspicuously observable; and the aforesaid reader will have a tolerably accurate idea of the presence and bearing of our amiable and accomplished messmate, Mr David Sprawl.

Rum subject as he certainly was to look at, he was a most excellent warm-hearted person at bottom, straightforward and kind to the men, never blazoning or amplifying their faults, but generally, on the other hand, softening them, and often astonishing the poor fellows by his out-of-the-way and unexpected kindness and civility, for he plumed himself on the general polish of his manners, whether to equals or inferiors, and they repaid the compliment by christening him, at one time, "Old Bloody Politeful," and "Davie Doublepipe", at another, from a peculiarity that we shall presently describe.

This remarkable personage was possessed of a very uncommon accomplishment, being a natural ventriloquist, having two distinct voices, as if he had been a sort of living double flagelet, one a falsetto, small and liquid, and clear as the note of an octave flute; the other sonorous and rough, as the groaning of a trombone. In conversation, the alternations, apparently involuntary, were so startling and abrupt, that they sounded as if ever and anon the keys of the high and low notes of an organ had been suddenly struck, so instantaneously were the small notes snapped off into the lower ones,-so that a stranger would, in all probability, have concluded, had he not known the peculiarities of the beauty, that a little midshipman was at one moment squeaking up the main hatchway from the hold, and at the next answered by a boatswain's mate on deck. Indeed, while the Commodore and his subaltern pursued their